Mahanagar (The Big City)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Mahanagar (The Big City) |
| Original title |
মহানগর (Mahanagar) |
| Country of production | India |
| original language | Bengali |
| Publishing year | 1963 |
| length | 128 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Satyajit Ray |
| script | Satyajit Ray |
| production | RD Bansal |
| music | Satyajit Ray |
| camera | Subrata Mitra |
| cut | Dulal Dutta |
| occupation | |
| |
Mahanagar ( Bengali : মহানগর , Mahānagar ; translated: The Big City ) is an Indian feature film by Satyajit Ray from 1963. It was based on the short story Abataranika by Narendranath Mitra .
action
The Mazumdar family (Subrata, his wife Arati, their son, Subrata's parents and his sister) live under one roof in Kolkata in the mid-1950s. Subrata works at a bank and finds it difficult to support the large family on his own with his income - his father needs new glasses, his sister's school fees are due and his mother wants new tobacco.
When Subrata tells Arati of a respectable family in which the woman also goes to work, Arati comes up with a plan to contribute to the family income through work, contrary to all conventions. Against the will of her in-laws, she takes a job as a saleswoman for knitting machines.
Her work life gains a new dimension, she is successful and is becoming more and more self-confident, Subrata, on the other hand, becomes insecure, and his father also urges him to get Arati to give up the job. When she wants to quit the next day, she calls Subrata and tells her that he has just lost his job at the bank; Arati thus becomes the family's sole breadwinner. Subrata increasingly suffers from seeing his wife go to work while unsuccessfully seeking job offers. He is estranged from Arati.
Arati has found a new friend in her Anglo-Indian colleague Edith Simmons. Her boss Mukherjee sees Edith as a woman with a relaxed lifestyle because of her origins and finally quits her. Arati stands up for her, but she is also threatened with dismissal. Then she gives Mukherjee her old letter of resignation and leaves. On the street she meets her husband, who is shocked by her news. However, they make up and Arati is sure that in a city as big as Kolkata one of them will definitely find a job again. They disappear into the crowd.
background
It is the first film by actress Madhabi Mukherjee with Ray, and she also appeared in his films Charulata (1964) and Kapurush (1965). Her film debut was the actress, however, in 1959 in a film by Mrinal Sen .
Jaya Bhaduri made her first film appearance in Mahanagar .
Reviews
“A touching and exhilarating contribution by the important Indian filmmaker on the subject of the emancipation of women; atmospherically dense, broad and carefully staged. "
Awards
- Certificate of Merit, New Delhi, 1964
- Silver Bear for Best Director, Berlinale 1964
Web links
- Mahanagar at the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Photos, action etc. (Engl.)
- Mahanagar (The Big City) ( Memento from February 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) on ucsc.edu
- Review by Roger Ebert (Engl.)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mahanagar. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 31, 2017 .